Talk:How To
= Main discussion page = Cleanup I've archived the old messages. moa3333 21:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC) :thanks, it has been a while since any of us has gotten to that 71.208.122.96 06:20, 13 December 2006 (UTC) OpenSource Laser Business opens in New York This article I read recently. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/12/233215&threshold=-1 It says that they even teach, and help to start such business. Thanks for Moa3333 for cleaning up the page. --Inyuki Appropedia Another wiki with howtos is Appropedia, the wiki site for appropriate technology, sustainability and international development. There's some overlap, but Appropedia has more specific subject areas (especially appropriate technology) and also has projects, case-studies etc. If there are relevant howtos here, please let us know at Appropedia - add the link yourself, or leave a note at the Village pump. Likewise, you may wish to link some of Appropedia's Howtos from here. I'm keen to see collaboration between these wikis as much as possible, and want to make sure we link to each other and transwiki where appropriate. --Singkong2005 15:43, 18 December 2006 (UTC) :It's good to see you chose the GFDL for that wiki's license which does make collaboration possible since content can be shared between these two wikis, as well as with other sites, like Wikipedia or Wikibooks. Angela talk 16:24, 24 December 2006 (UTC) ::Yes - it took a long discussion, but that was the reason we went with GFDL. ::I'm not very familiar with licensing, but I'm told that GFDL requires attribution. Does this mean we need some kind of attribution notice for any page that takes a significant amount of text from another GFDL source? If you can suggest a good link on that topic it would be much appreciated, so I can add that to the appropriate page on Appropedia. --Singkong2005 16:49, 24 December 2006 (UTC) :::The template at Wikia:Template:Wikipedia can be adapted to give attribution. See Wikipedia:Project:Copyrights for more information. Angela talk 21:25, 24 December 2006 (UTC) =New Object page design?= *User:ZyMOS/temp/neo-object I have been thinking about the object page design and listening my friends' opinions about it. one major problem they have is, It is not obvious that the link on the object name goes to wikipedia I would have to agree with them. One idea i though would also be useful is have a very short description of the object, on the page. No more than 5 words, just so people know is the object is what they think it is, without having to goto wikipedia and back . So here is my solution to the above stated and more. *User:ZyMOS/temp/neo-object The page intro could be a simple template exp : Let me know what you folks think, and if naything can be improved ZyMOS 07:11, 24 December 2006 (UTC) :So i worked on it a little more, and made this test example, cheeseburger. Here are also some stuff about my idea and other examples. User:ZyMOS/temp :ZyMOS 06:37, 25 December 2006 (UTC) =277 howtos and 108 Guides= Not bad, and our spanish site has over 80 howtos. We are really becoming an awsome site ZyMOS 18:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC) :Yes, that was really amazing to see the appearance of the ES version Inyuki 07:36, 26 March 2007 (UTC) What I see wrong Wrong is that many pages still have only links to some other pages. It is the job of Google, not us to collect links; and I guess that most people will find it easier to find the links through Google. It's not so interesting to just browse the links. I think we have to create the genuine content of our own. Inyuki 07:38, 26 March 2007 (UTC) = Sometimes it is a better way of writing Howtos = Here is how: to write Your real stories of accomplishing things, rather than writing abstract howtos I started doing it this way now in the Japanese version of the Wiki. Asking people to write their stories of a accomplishing things, with the comments on how it may be possible to do the same thing in different circumstances, may be more effective way of actually getting people writing howtos than only asking "How to do X?" Here are the reasons: * Stories of doing something are something that people already know, whereas trying to write a highly abstract howto for a number of situations is almost impossible, and this leads only to confusion, because the writer does not know how to do it in a number of other situations that he or she has probably no experience of, except the particular situation that he had done it in. * It is much more time-efficient to share the personal experiences than trying to write abstract workable howtos for any possible situation, because you do not need to use much time to think of all the possible situations, and only to tell your unique story well, the one and only that you are 100% competent about that it had succeeded. * Stories are easier to read. They are more fun and more straightforward and natural method of expression. From the ancient times stories were the form of knowledge that remained in people's minds best. It is perhaps so because it is the closest thing to reality that one can get in a written form. Understanding the reality well was what was important in survival of any living being. (Abstraction is further from actual reality than the experience is.) * People will be more confident trying to repeat the story, because they can be sure that it has once been done, and not something that one just has to follow and see. Also, there is a person who is responsible for the story, and can answer the questions through talk page. This is my personal opinion, but I think that writing an open story, and giving your situtational background, your thoughts while solving a task may be much more educational. I really miss the times of books. Is it that people have lost their skills in story telling? Inyuki 08:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC) : By the way, I think that scientists are already doing it this way, - they write descriptions of the experiments the way that other researchers could repeat them and check, and the best is to write a story how they managed to do that, in very detail. However, in case of Wikihowto, perhaps we should try to consider a general audience rather than narrower scientific community. Of course, that would require much more writing... Inyuki 06:02, 16 March 2007 (UTC) ::Yet I think reading a real story composed of paragraphs where for every paragraph the author is first off explaining what actually was done, and then commenting the choices and grounding them by the authors thoughts and considerations, can be more interesting to read, than reading only the directions, only steps. Inyuki 11:04, 17 March 2007 (UTC) ::: It may well be that if every decent creation will have it's open story, much more people will be able to catch up with the technological progress. This awareness of the stories may be very important approaching the technological singularity. Inyuki The Japanese version... I mean, what I did in the Japanese wiki, is I put the invitation in the main page to write creation stories, and started explaining how did I create a simple Japanese-Lithuanian online dictionary for mobile phones using a rental server in Lithuania, not only as an example of the explanation method, but because one Japanese visitor of the dictionary asked me, how did I do it. I have put the link to it in the main page as an example. I think it is a good way to make people catch the idea of actually sharing their production stories. I started with the object link, linking directly to the online dictionary, and then follows a short introduction, why did I thought of making a dictionary, when. Then I just straightforwardly wrote what I did, braking down the big steps into small paragraphs in such a sequence that one paragraph but ennumerates a number of actions I did (so that the reader could just repeat the actions if he or she wants), and the following paragraph explains my choice and thoughts. What is specific about the way I did, is perhaps that I just wrote down just the way I did, not "how to do". For instance, - that I just found a piece of code on the internet or PHP help, and just changed some variables. (i.e., username, password). So the one who reads can kind of understand the simplicity. Thinking of the next steps, I thought I would like to know a story of ZyMOS writing the bot for Wikihowto, that actually works :-), just as an instance of actually-working knowledge. MediaWiki also has it's story, from what did the developers start? What is particularly their production, and what are the parts that they have used from somewhere else? (If we understand that, we could much better contribute to it's development, wouldn't we?) I think people should be quite good at remembering their own story, and there should be ways of asking to write them it down. If we had such stories for every product, I believe that even the open source projects could be more accessible, even for non-programmers. (So, I will try to put the link to the page of the dictionary, to it's explanation.) If we explain our thought processess, then I think others will understand how actually simple the things are. And who will benefit from it, is all mankind. Important, in order to be as close to the reality as possible, one has to be as OPEN and HONEST about writing how exactly he or she did that and how thought of doing so, as it is possible. Telling the pure true in the first place, without much abstraction or pondering about other possible situations is what is a good way not to get confused, I think. That is the thoughts for now. みんでぃ 17:02, 19 March 2007 (UTC) : I drafted both howto install FreeDOS in QEMU and howto test if your BSD system supports IPv6 based from my experience, but nowhere in either document do I cite my experience. Further, if I actually wanted to document a "success story", I would have to write howtos like "howto run DOS programs above Unix" or "howto add your BSD system to the IPv6 internet". Maybe later, I will work upon that. --Kernigh 15:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC) ::Mr. Kernigh, I took a look at your works. I find it quite confident trying to follow them. I think it could be a good idea to make something like a "featured howto stories" in the main page. :::Why else write personally? Just my own impression: I would really more gladly grab reading your howto install FreeDOS in QEMU, if you had added some more of personal touch into it. I would also feel more confident asking you questions through talk page. In the Japanese version I wrote it using the pronoun "I". ::::The difference from a traditional success story would be the level of detail, and the intention (to share knowhow, leaving no technological secrets), thus "open stories" :-) As soon as we have many instances of concrete open stories, we will have more confidence in writing abstract howtos, so I think the two subtypes of instructional knowledge could quite well coexist here. --みんでぃ 21:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC) Howto & DIY category on u-tube http://www.youtube.com/browse?s=mp&t=t&c=26 nl Hi!!! Since 28 March, we have got a http://nl.howto.wikia.com/ site. we are growing very fast :). bye --Jorgechp (ke t kuentas?) 10:03, 3 April 2007 (UTC) P.D: es.howto just reached 140 articles Add French language Could you please create the French version of Wikihowto ? (Further, when will it be a Wikimedia Foundation project ? It should become a very popular and useful wiki) Pattern Language Hi, all interested in the project. You can read this Wikipedia page when you have time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_language. I think it is very much related with the goal of this project. I found this Wikipedia page after inspecting one comment on our project: zen_tom @ halfbakery.com comments on our project: I was cynical at first - but having had to do something similar (albeit within a much more specific remit) I found some approaches more useful than others. The most interesting, I discovered after learning about the work of a chap called Christopher Alexander, who wrote a pair of books, "The Timeless Way of Building" and "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction" which describe generic architectural forms (entranceways, passageways, rooms, bridges, connections etc) with a few suggestions and examples of how these have been made in the past. The same technique was utilised by the 'gang of four' who published "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" which explored the concept of design patterns in the realms of software design. This technique should be scalable to adapt to work within almost any realm of technological design, construction or engineering, and a wiki is the ideal way to put such a thing together. --Inyuki Request for French language being processed Here is the request http://requests.wikia.com/wiki/Fr.howto Hopefully, the French version will appear soon. Inyuki :I've created this wiki and set Jean-Baptiste Martin as the wikis admin. Angela talk 18:43, 6 April 2007 (UTC) ::Yes, thank you. He seems to be interested in innovation, so, hopefully we can see something new on that page soon. He has also provided his e-mail on his homepage. I think it could be a good idea to give him the message usually issued after creation of a new wiki, with the links and passwords to the mailng list, and such things. It may be encouraging. Inyuki 22:43, 6 April 2007 (UTC) :::Thank you. I initiated 4 articles in the French version, and added a link to fr in the current page. To help, how could I add a link to fr on the left of this current page, and (if possible?) add the Image:Wikihowto-logo-2.1-stable-med.png logo 2 times in the fr.howto.wikia as you did in the current page ? I didn't found the right syntax. ::::Well, you go to the Upload special page ( http://fr.howto.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Upload ) and upload the image file, wich has to be named as Wiki.png, which should be located at http://fr.howto.wikia.com/wiki/Image:Wiki.png ), as an example, I will upload the English versions's present logo. -- Inyuki I thank you very much, it's run. "How did we create MediaWiki" article I have added a namespace for the article titled as "How did we create MediaWiki". I thought to make it the kind of story I was talking about above. I wrote more details on the article's talk page. The article's name is not in the "Howto*" syntax. It is so because I making it "Howto*" would de-spiritualize (make it impersonal), but it had been developed by people who have their own personalities, their own character, thus 'WE'. I think this way the information will be easier to convey to a 6-year old. (As it was mentioned before, I very much agree with Albert Einstein's phares: "If you cannot explain a concept to a 6 year-old, then you do not fully understand it." From now on I intend working on this article for a long, really long time, to have an example of an article. Inyuki 13:55, 8 April 2007 (UTC) Links to fr.howto Hello, could you add the down and left links to the recently created fr.howto version? Thanks and good luck for your version. : I have asked this question to Angela on her Talk Page. みんでぃ 20:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC) Promotion of WikiHowTo To make WikiHowTo useful and known, there should be a minimum number of pages and of contributors, in each language. How could we get that? How to promote WikiHowTo? I think the life of 3 or more languages is key success factor. I feel that to show a dynamic TimeLine (I was refering the TimeLine shown in the paragraph "Wikihowto and the rest" of the Main_Page--Jean-Baptiste Martin jbm.schtuff.com 06:33, 10 April 2007 (UTC))is another key factor. Would it be possible to add at least one event per month from 2006, June 15th to today? And to include in this TimeLine the creation of Spanish WikiAyuda, French Wikicomment, and others? We all have to get benefits from common stimulations. Based on your experience, please advise how should I promote Wikicomment (with French pronunciation as it means HOW and not COMMENTARY). Thanks for cooperation.--Jean-Baptiste Martin jbm.schtuff.com 09:40, 9 April 2007 (UTC) :I believe we have to give some good examples of what we expect on this howto. I have done it this way in Japanese version: : 1. Added a Create article field : 2. Added an example of personally written howto that I wrote as an answer to my friend : 3. Added few samples of open story kind of howtos and a few samples of normally written howtos :My best results of writing howtos appeared to be the ones where I wrote howtos in response to other people's howto questions. :Yes, if we had a good dynamic international timeline, that could really help to coordinate the project. :I think ZyMOS would suggest just adding more content, no matter if it is genuine or not, because the more quality content we would have, the more likely it will be shown on a search engine. That is also an option. :I personally prefer alive pages (with creator's support), not dead pages. Alive pages are the ones that are supported by a person who actually has done the thing at least once, has experience, and can answer additional questions through talk pages. :We are not in a hurry, just let us remember this project whenever someone asks us personally, how did we do something. (I find it most motivating thing to give a link to my own article at Howto Wiki, instead of writing an explanation in an email; so I automatically advertise it at these moments. :Another suggestion - to write short stories of "How did I create this page?" to the upper right corner of the page, or as a related link. みんでぃ 20:24, 9 April 2007 (UTC) :: I think one wiki we should cooperate with is Wikianswers. People can ask questions there and when there is an answer, we should try to rewrite it better and make a Howto or Guide of it. I think also that, as Wikihowto will eventually become o Wikimedia project, we could merge the two wikis into a single one. I mean, make wikianswers a sub-wiki of Wikihowto or womething becaus i don't see Wikimedia aprove the creation of two unrelated official Wikimedia projects. moa3333 10:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC) :::I saw few questions directly connected to a Howto (e.g. those beginning by "How do" in http://answers.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Allpages, and several others). Some other could be rewritten with Howto point of view. I feel the answer to many questions is often a Wikipedia purpose. The cooperation is a good suggestion, at least to explain in Wikianswers and in Wikihowto the existance and role of the other one. Further : I feel there is somewhere in Wikipedia a space to ask questions ? In this case there should be the same space in Wikihowto, and Wikianswers could be connected to these two spaces ?--Jean-Baptiste Martin jbm.schtuff.com 10:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC) Promotion of Wikihowto writting Howtos for most frequent questions As suggested by User:Moa3333 in ('general practical "solutions" to every day life: from where the name Wikisolutions came first') I created the Guide to find wich content the internauts expect in web site, based of my experience for Wikicomment (recent French version of Wikihowto). I feel apply this guide would accelerate the development of Wikihowto. Mainly Wikihowto would fit the need of many web surfers. Please advise?--Jean-Baptiste Martin jbm.schtuff.com 15:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC) Promotion of Wikihowto thru DMOZ directory Wikia and many Wikia projects are registered in DMOZ. I just asked DMOZ to register Wikicomment in the category "World: Français: Références: Encyclopédies". Would you ask DMOZ to register Wikihowto in something like http://dmoz.org/Reference/Open_Access_Resources ? --Jean-Baptiste Martin jbm.schtuff.com 21:45, 13 April 2007 (UTC) =cron= i finally setup a cron job for the howto count script that makes the lists of pages . It should run once a week. Let me know if there is any problems, or you have any suggestions ZyMOS 04:49, 12 April 2007 (UTC) :Great job. It is now like in Google, where you can search for different kind of content by putting additional commands such as "define:" before the query. If I understand it correctly (tell me if I am wrong), essentially what you did is creating the kind of new type of categories like Howto:, Guide:, Object:, etc in order to be able to manage the content better. Considering the recent appearance of the "Open Story" thing, I am thinking that maybe the pages of the kind "OpenStory:" could also exist (yet this kind of content may also become popular). Another thought is that it is good to have the kind of sorting of information in our case, when the instructional information is of diverse types. It is now being done by the bot, but as soon as we start hacking the MediaWiki more seriously, it might be a good idea to implement the kind of link-based sorting capabilities into the MediaWiki itself. :-) thoughts for now Inyuki 14:18, 12 April 2007 (UTC) ::By the way, do you think that writing now about how did you create the bot, could yield a meaningful example of a good "howto" or "openstory" ? Inyuki ::Ya sounds good, I used to just have the scripts source but it hasn't been updated in forever. Ill make a howto like you sugested above when i have time. Another note I have combined allot of the similar free software guides, so there soon will only be about 20 guides listed. So dont fret. see Guide to FOSS (free open source software), Guide to FOSS games (free open source software) ZyMOS 18:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC) :::I see. It sounds good, actually, recently I have made a list of software/tasks that I need to learn how to do in Linux or other opensource operating system, to be able to abandon using windows... (now I just cannot because there is a number of applications that I would need). This kind of guid may also prove useful. ::: :::If you are gonna write an "OpenStory", I think you don't have to write how you created some piece of code that you just used fros somewhere else. Maybe just to mention how did you think of using, or how did you find it. Inyuki 06:23, 13 April 2007 (UTC) Prosumers are getting popular Just recently I read news about MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices). Called a mobile Internet Device, or MID, the devices will have screen sizes from 4.5 to six inches with a target audience described as consumers and prosumers" rather than mobile professionals. Being that industry is getting aware of the term is happy news to me. Inyuki 13:06, 18 April 2007 (UTC)